im bengali and my mom has the most gorgeous curls i have ever seen, and she damages it alot! she hates her curls and flat irons it and brushes it out . i thought i had my dad's shiny straight hair until i turned 11 or 12 and my hair started to curl. i saw curly hair as a bad thing because of my mom and used to brush it out and wear it up or flat iron it. now i've finally learned to love my wavy/curly hair

Another Indian girl here...wow I didn't know there were this many Indian curlies on NC! When I read thread I immediately related to so much! Lol, my mom does the coconut oil thing/dry comb until its poofy thing with her curly hair. My hair was pin straight when I was younger..I'm not sure when it went wavy (maybe at 9?), because I continued treating it like straight hair (dry brushing/shampooing), so over the years we thought it was just becoming frizzier and I'd just have to live with how my hair was. I wore it in braids and ponytails from ages 8-14. I'm 16 now and I love my hair now that I know it's actually curly, not frizzy, and I know how to actually take care of it. It's nice to see I'm not the only one! This thread was so relatable for me and great to see.

o ya this is what i do to my hair.......um i put cocnut oil while im showering mixed with my conditioner. Then i bought this paul mitchell fraud conditioner and it works really well so i out that in my hair i have to have coconut oil!!!!!!!!!!!!! but i dont brush it out

Actually Caucasian does not necessarily mean white. According to many dictionaries it is:

Anthropology Of or being a human racial classification distinguished especially by very light to brown skin pigmentation and straight to wavy or curly hair, and including peoples indigenous to Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and India.

Originally Posted by Alexjoujou

That's interesting..I've never seen that definition. It sounds kinda *funny* though...I have light brown skin which I joke is beige b/c...well...it is...I'm a hair darker than my mom (she's Irish/English). And I also obviously have curly hair. But I wouldn't refer to myself as white/caucasian. That seems laughable for me.

I learned that a lot of Indians ID as white a few yrs ago. I was suprised since many of them are a lot darker than me.

Actually Caucasian does not necessarily mean white. According to many dictionaries it is:

Anthropology Of or being a human racial classification distinguished especially by very light to brown skin pigmentation and straight to wavy or curly hair, and including peoples indigenous to Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and India.

Originally Posted by Alexjoujou

That's interesting..I've never seen that definition. It sounds kinda *funny* though...I have light brown skin which I joke is beige b/c...well...it is...I'm a hair darker than my mom (she's Irish/English). And I also obviously have curly hair. But I wouldn't refer to myself as white/caucasian. That seems laughable for me.

I learned that a lot of Indians ID as white a few yrs ago. I was suprised since many of them are a lot darker than me.

Originally Posted by MixedUpCurlyChick

Alex is correct. Caucasian doesn't refer to just "white" people. There are many Indians with "black" or light to medium dark brown skin. I think that somewhere over the years Caucasian became synonymous with white skin. Usually, at least in America, white on an ID form refers to someone who would be socially white. Many Indians will put down Asian, although in America Asian tends to refer to central Asians.

Outside of white and black America, most people use a combination of hair texture, facial features, body type and skin color to describe racial characteristics, instead of just skin color.

Actually Caucasian does not necessarily mean white. According to many dictionaries it is:

Anthropology Of or being a human racial classification distinguished especially by very light to brown skin pigmentation and straight to wavy or curly hair, and including peoples indigenous to Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and India.

Originally Posted by Alexjoujou

That's interesting..I've never seen that definition. It sounds kinda *funny* though...I have light brown skin which I joke is beige b/c...well...it is...I'm a hair darker than my mom (she's Irish/English). And I also obviously have curly hair. But I wouldn't refer to myself as white/caucasian. That seems laughable for me.

I learned that a lot of Indians ID as white a few yrs ago. I was suprised since many of them are a lot darker than me.

Originally Posted by MixedUpCurlyChick

Alex is correct. Caucasian doesn't refer to just "white" people. There are many Indians with "black" or light to medium dark brown skin. I think that somewhere over the years Caucasian became synonymous with white skin. Usually, at least in America, white on an ID form refers to someone who would be socially white. Many Indians will put down Asian, although in America Asian tends to refer to central Asians.

Outside of white and black America, most people use a combination of hair texture, facial features, body type and skin color to describe racial characteristics, instead of just skin color.

Originally Posted by multicultcurly

Right. I wasn't trying to refute that. I was saying I wouldn't refer to myself as either white or caucasian. I rarely even use the word "caucasian." I actually didn't mean to use them interchangeably above. I know that racial classifications differ by group and/or country. I was just saying that I wouldn't refer to a very dark skinned person as "white." It doesn't make sense to me. People of course, can identify however they wish.

hookilau, which part of Trinidad are you from? I'm also from Trinidad. My neighbour, who's indian relaxed her hair to get it slick straight. She had wavy hair but it became limp and straight after the relaxer.

Blessed Princess Diamante, High Archivist of the Thrifty Trinitarians in the Order of the Curly Crusaders

I *never* knew Indian folks chemically straightened their hair!! WOW. Learn something new every day, huh?

Having never had much extended family here in NY (they're all in T&T) I haven't had much experience with culturally specific beautification. Basically, I just had to figure it out for myself. Not easy.

> i hate my mom sometimes though...she'll look at my hair and tell me to go and brush it and yell at me for not doing that. she tells me that my hair looks all messy and wild and reaallly tangled and that always made me have insecurities about my hair. but i guess my hair is alrite because everyone at school loves it

I *never* knew Indian folks chemically straightened their hair!! WOW. Learn something new every day, huh?

Having never had much extended family here in NY (they're all in T&T) I haven't had much experience with culturally specific beautification. Basically, I just had to figure it out for myself. Not easy.

Originally Posted by hookilau

Ah, I see.

Blessed Princess Diamante, High Archivist of the Thrifty Trinitarians in the Order of the Curly Crusaders

Used to babysit twin Indian girls (Telugu) before we moved, one had straight hair and the other wavy hair similiar to my youngest daughter's. Their mother preferred straight hair, but embraced her daughter's wavy hair and had her girls wear identical hair styles. I never witnessed her try to make the wavy haired twin have straight hair. When I did her daughter's hair in styles like my youngest, where the waves are enhanced with stuff like KCCC, their mother beamed and the straight-haired twin wanted the waves too, lol. The relatives in my family who are mixed with Indian ancestry pretty much have loose wavies to very wavy hair. Only straight haired folks in my family who are blood relatives (and not just married into) are mixed with Phillipino or another non-Indian Asian ancestry.

Used to babysit twin Indian girls (Telugu) before we moved, one had straight hair and the other wavy hair similiar to my youngest daughter's. Their mother preferred straight hair, but embraced her daughter's wavy hair and had her girls wear identical hair styles. I never witnessed her try to make the wavy haired twin have straight hair. When I did her daughter's hair in styles like my youngest, where the waves are enhanced with stuff like KCCC, their mother beamed and the straight-haired twin wanted the waves too, lol. The relatives in my family who are mixed with Indian ancestry pretty much have loose wavies to very wavy hair. Only straight haired folks in my family who are blood relatives (and not just married into) are mixed with Phillipino or another non-Indian Asian ancestry.

Originally Posted by madhuri_dixit_fan

Odd because most of the Filipino people I've known have had wavy to very curly hair, although I have known some with very straight hair.

Used to babysit twin Indian girls (Telugu) before we moved, one had straight hair and the other wavy hair similiar to my youngest daughter's. Their mother preferred straight hair, but embraced her daughter's wavy hair and had her girls wear identical hair styles. I never witnessed her try to make the wavy haired twin have straight hair. When I did her daughter's hair in styles like my youngest, where the waves are enhanced with stuff like KCCC, their mother beamed and the straight-haired twin wanted the waves too, lol. The relatives in my family who are mixed with Indian ancestry pretty much have loose wavies to very wavy hair. Only straight haired folks in my family who are blood relatives (and not just married into) are mixed with Phillipino or another non-Indian Asian ancestry.

Originally Posted by madhuri_dixit_fan

Odd because most of the Filipino people I've known have had wavy to very curly hair, although I have known some with very straight hair.

Originally Posted by multicultcurly

It's really odd to me as well. They have jet black str8 hair, and one parents is African-American with brown hair, lol.

She played Maya in Kama Sutra. Sarita Choudhury, also in the same movie, sometimes wears her hair wavy, loose curls. I can't find any pictures, although in Mississippi Masala her hair is wavy throughout the film.

I guess my mother was different from most other indian mothers. I used to have really curly hair, but never knew what to do with it, so I straightened it all the time, and she would tell me that it looked nicer curly. She also mentioned numerous times that i looked like a witch with straight hair
I'm not sure if it's all the straightening over the years or just that my hair has changed but it's just really wavy now, and I actually miss the curls

Last edited by wavyR; 02-18-2010 at 12:48 AM.
Reason: picture was wayy too big the first time :P

interesting thread... I used to watch this show out here called Showbiz India (well it used to be called that) and I noticed the women on there always have straight or minimally curly hair. I also noticed they were all light skinned. It pissed me off pretty bad when I finally realized this. Then I remember when I was in college there was this Indian girl who was like... so amazingly pretty and she kept sayin she wasn't attractive because she was dark. I'm black and she was darker than me. I could never figure out why she thought her skin was unattractive. She was so pretty. she talked about how her mom tried to lighten her skin when she was a teen and it didn't work.

So anyway Now I boycott showbiz india.

- don't let everybody elses long straight weave bum you out. don't let other people's big/long natural hair bum you out either. embrace what you have and rock it with confidence, because that's the only way you'll be happy. and whether you realize it or not you are somebody's influence. show them what it truly means to be confident.